Hindu Administrative Institutions c12.s4.1

c12.s4.1

India has been largely a country of village communities, a system now practically extinct. Social and even economic reasons had to a great measure contributed to the growth of these tiny little republics, both in the southern and the northern parts of ancient India. Sir Charles Metcalfe quoted by Banerjee in his *Indian Economics* has the following remark: ‘This union of the village communities, each one forming a separate little state in itself, has, I conceive, contributed more than any other cause to the preservation of the people of India, through all the evolutions and changes which they have suffered and is in a high degree conducive to their happiness and to the enjoyment of a great portion of freedom and independence.’¹ Sir George Birdwood again has remarked that ‘the village communities have been the stronghold of the traditionary arts of India: and though these arts have passed out of the villages into the wide world beyond, the caste system of the code of Manu has still been their best defence against the taint and degradation of foreign passions.’²